Fresh: postcards from the future

Postcards from the future

Authors:
Atticus Wolrab

Dear Dr. Usability,

I have been working on a Web project for the past six
months. The design is almost complete, but my manager has just
added a requirement that our site be accessible to a culturally
diverse audience. I am wondering whether that is really
necessary. He argues that every Web site is, by definition,
international in scopeand he is no doubt correctbut
our site was established to allow an end user to order
Glühwein over the Web. Does it really need to be culturally
diverse? I am about to invest heavily in the Server Language pack
update and hire some Chinese and Indian translators. Can you help
me before we start this enormous project?

Designing in the Black Forest

Dear Black Forest,

I may be making a big assumption here, but isn’t the audience
that will be ordering Glühwein quite specialized? Perhaps
expanding your "reach" is one of your site’s
objectives?

By your name I am guessing that you may be working on site in
the Schwarzwald, aka Black Forest, region of Southwest Germany. I
am willing to bet that if you’ve done some user research of your
target, it showed your cultural-diversity program must
accommodate the region including France and Germany and other
areas just beyond by providing French- and German-language
versions of the site. If you do that, I think you can say you are
covering all the bases in terms of cultural diversity with just
French and German. (And I will bet you a beignet that the German
translation will cost you some relayout time!) If you started in
English, prepare for a late night or two.

Here in the US we often refer to
"EFIGS"English, French, Italian, German,
Spanishthe most common languages into which software and
Web sites must be translated. These are the most common European
languages; Brazilian and Portuguese are likely the next to be
included. But don’t forget double-byte languages: Chinese
(traditional and simplified), Japanese, Korean. And many more. (I
know taste is personal, but I just can’t see a double-byte
audience for Glühwein.) Translating text strings into
alternate languages often requires changes to layout. Simply put,
if what you are developing in English needs to be translated into
German, add 30 percent width once localization has translated the
resource strings; for double byte, add ten percent height. And
remembervery small font sizes are almost impossible to
read in non-Roman characters, so there is a lower limit for all
that "fine print." If you have the misfortune of
dealing with bitmaps instead of resources, feel confident that
you will have to create them over and over and over as you adjust
size, layout, and oh, did you want text treatments for those
fonts?

So back to the Glühwein. Oh dear. When and if you do get
calls outside of Germany or France, my guess is that it will
probably be from a homesick expatriate or at least someone
familiar with German, French or English. So if you are already
prepared to release in English, German and French, there is
little point in translating this site into many more languages.
Indeed, I think the Wine Bureau would even appreciate it if you
didn’t. It is easy for anyone to stand on a pedestal and preach
about the need for cultural diversity; your user population must
determine to what degree you require it.

Lastly, if you really must reach out to other cultures, maybe
you want to broaden your appeal and sell things that a wider
audience might want to buy. Have you heard of any international
parallels to Glühwein? I’m afraid you are going to need a
more extensive user study to answer that one. Although, now that
I think about it, it’s pretty cold out there. I think I will
order some Glühwein myself; please send me your URL!

Mulled regards,
The Doc

Author

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